Friday, October 17, 2014

I
am a little frustrated and tired of attending ecclesiastical events where Jesus
is barely mentioned, if at all.It
is a residual symptom of Christendom that we in the church can all just assume
that Jesus Christ is what we are about, without actually having to mention his
name.If we are disciples of
Jesus, and if this is the core of our identity, especially in his church, then
it seems to me that we ought to be referencing his life, work, teachings, death,
resurrection, and Spirit all the time.

Now,
I am certainly not in favor of dragging Jesus’ name into every event in some
token or obligatory way, as trivial window-dressing.Fundamentalists are quite proficient at attaching Jesus’
name to every atrocity and obscenity they advocate and perpetrate, no matter how utterly contrary to Jesus' life and teachings.

But disciples should frequently and
regularly refer to, and be challenged by,
the one they claim to follow. No?

Recently
I attended a semi-mandatory “boundary training” event offered by our
presbytery.It was generally very
good.But well into the second
half I began to get grumpy because I had heard zero references to Jesus.And when, in the Q & A, someone
asked about Jesus, reminding us that he was if anything an inveterate boundary breaker, the presenter merely quipped
that Jesus “didn’t have a very long career.”The implication being that following Jesus may be fine for
some, but maybe not for mature professionals working towards a happy retirement.Not for churches that wanted to be
around in five years.As if, when
the question is one of congregational and ministerial longevity, following
Jesus is not a very good idea.

It
is depressing how often this happens.Our denomination and the leadership of our presbytery are pushing a
church renewal program called “New Beginnings.”My assumption is that any effort to renew the church would
necessarily involve at its heart a consideration of what the Lord Jesus had to
say and what he did.Yet here
again, one searches the web-site and Powerpoint presentations in vain for any
but the most perfunctory mention of Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.It’s all marketing, demographics,
context, and the newly adopted term, “sustainability”… which is little more
than a contemporary translation of what older Bibles called “mammon.”Apparently, “New Beginnings” is a quick
and dirty way to assess and enhance a church’s sustainability without the
inconvenience of having to crack open a Bible or waste valuable time in prayer.

To
be fair, some of the stories of congregations that used this process indicate
real spiritual renewal and revitalized mission.But this appears to be because they brought to the program a
concern for actual discipleship that is largely absent in the program itself.Much of "New Beginnings" would work in
principle for almost any retail business trying to relate to its context and
set goals.

My
point is that sometimes the church is so thoroughly corrupted and bought out by
Modern, imperialist America that it substitutes without much thought its
practices and values for those of Jesus Christ.So when we consider boundaries, we look to the therapeutic
professionals.When we consider
evangelism we look to marketing professionals.When it comes to polity, we find out what the latest trend is
in the corporate world.When
deciding how the church should respond to political issues, we choose: Democrat
or Republican.And when we have to
grapple with economic questions we are far more concerned for working within
capitalism than we are with listening to what Jesus and Scripture say with
rigorous intensity and consistency.

I
suspect that we are slow to mention Jesus Christ because, a) we don’t want to
sound like fundamentalists who use his name as a wedge and a weapon, and b) we
would prefer to keep his demands at arms length.He explicitly threatens everything we hold dear.And it would never occur to ask whether
we are holding the wrong things dear.

But
Jesus Christ is the hope and future of the world, and if we who claim to be his
disciples can’t bring ourselves to refer and defer to him even when we are
gathered together with each other – let alone when we are engaging with the
world into which he sends us – then we have neither hope nor future.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The
practice of blessing animals, while it might be new and unusual for
Presbyterians, actually has a long history in Christianity.It goes back at least to Francis of
Assisi, which is why many churches choose early October to bless animals.Francis’ day is October 4.

Blessing
animals recognizes the larger community of creation and our place in it as
humans.Animals and humans were
created on the same Sixth Day of creation in Genesis 1.The “dominion” God gives humans over
the animals is something that has to be exercised after the example of the Lord
Jesus.That is, dominion means
faithful stewardship and loving care.It does not and cannot mean a careless and violent domination, for we do
not see that kind of thing in Jesus.

Animals
(as well as birds and fish, creatures of the Fifth Day) appear in Scripture in
many places.Often they appear
subtly but significantly.At his
baptism, the Presence of God appears as a dove, and immediately thereafter, in
the wilderness, he was accompanied by angels and wild beasts (Mark1:13).In Jesus’ life, a donkey traditionally
conveys him and his mother to Bethlehem before he is born, and then to Egypt
when his life is threatened.Of
course, a donkey is also enlisted to bear the Savior into the holy city of
Jerusalem, according to prophecy.Jesus himself is often referred to as a “Lamb,” bringing to mind the
sacrificial lamb of Passover, and the two goats of the Day of Atonement.

Jesus
used animals and birds as images and signs of God’s Kingdom in several places,
indicating that we may see God’s saving Presence at work in God’s
creatures.In this he is building
on the tradition we find in Psalms 104 and 148, the two great creation Psalms.All of creation was made to praise God!Finally, animals are specifically
blessed by God in Psalm 36:6, where they are counted with humans among those
whom God “saves.”(The same Greek
word is used in the New Testament to talk about salvation.)

We
bless animals now to demonstrate our communion with and responsibility to care
for God’s creation.This is a particularly
important practice in our own time, when creation is so jeopardized by our
rapacious economy.Human
carelessness and greed are not only kicking the atmosphere out of balance by massive
injections of carbon, not to mention countless other pollutants, but we have
also sparked a wave of extinctions that may eliminate from the earth half the
life forms God made and placed here.

In
blessing animals we set ourselves with Jesus and his creation, and against the
objectification, abuse, and commodification of animals (and everything else)
that our economy, a systematic super-amplification ofhuman avarice, demands.It is therefore a revolutionary act in favor of God’s life
in the face of a culture of death.

In
blessing animals we willingly accept our role in caring for, preserving,
protecting, and loving God’s creation, this beautiful vineyard God has placed
in our stewardship.